Mullumbimby Travel Guide

Mullumbimby is a quiet country township which was once a rural centre servicing the surrounding farms. In the late 1960s it became one of the great alternative lifestyle centres in the country. It carries this reputation with much more confidence than its more famous partner, Nimbin, which is only a short distance away. In the lexicon of names which can be used to conjure up images of hippies and psychedelic colours Mullumbimby is second only to Nimbin. Ironically today the town bears few signs of the lifestyle which invaded it in the early 1970s. There are no brightly-coloured shop fronts like Nimbin; there are no young kids up from Sydney looking for drugs and fun. Mullumbimby is located 4 km off the Pacific Highway, 798 km north-east of Sydney, 19 km north-west of Byron Bay and 165 km south of Brisbane. It is situated on the Brunswick River at 4 metres above sea-level and had a population, in 1996, of 2870 people. Tourism is important to the local economy in a region which is noted for its production of bananas, avocados, pineapples and other tropical fruit, dairy products, macadamia nuts, cattle, pigs and timber. The town's name is thought to derive from the language of the Bundjalung people with 'muli' said to mean 'hill'. The full name has been interpreted as meaning 'small round hill' - a reference to Mt Chincogan (309 m), beneath which the town is situated. The Mullumbimby Chincogan Fiesta, held each year in September, centres on a foot-race from the post office to the top of Mt Chincogan and back. The Mullumbimby markets are held in the reserve behind the Stuart Street Museum on the third Saturday of the month.